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What is “Western Civilization”?
Anything but “Civilization”
How the New Cambridge Modern History Buried the Americas
As I have argued elsewhere, as recently as today, the idea of “civilization”—that it is, what it is—emerges after the Renaissance.
Call it a precipitate of the (dis)solution of the older order of social knowledge, the older conceptions of the world that did not have to grapple with the meaning of humankind flourishing in a place heretofore unknown and unimagined.
The very idea of a “New World” required the re-thinking of every idea about “the world.” The concept of “civilization” is an eventual result of this re-thinking.
This assertion can be disorienting for some. My essay of earlier today wasn’t up for very long before a commenter asked for clarification: he wondered what I could possibly mean by saying that “The very idea of a ‘civilization’ was not accessible — it was, perhaps, unthinkable — to Columbus and Cortés and Garcilaso de la Vega.” Could I really mean that they had no concept of “civilization.”
Yes, that’s what I meant. The concept of “empire” was available, the term “republic” in a broadly generic sense (rather than a specifically Machiavellian sense) was in wide use, the term “people” was long known. But…
